A work of interdisciplinary scholarship combining geography, linguistics, geology, literary studies, ecology, and folklore within a unified historical narrative, this dissertation examines Navajos' economic, ecological, and spiritual relationships to their forests through time. During the Spanish/Mexican colonial period in the Southwest, Dine (Navajo) agropastoralists and their churro sheep gradually moved up out of the arid San Juan Basin into the semi-arid ponderosa pine forests of the Defiance Uplift. Dine culture was transformed, becoming more mobile and affluent. Navajos used their forests and nearby Canyon de Chelly as a "mountain of agriculture," a vital source of economic and spiritual values. Although grazing altered forest fire regimes, Dine patterns of seasonal transhumance expressed the deeper structures of Navajo language, merging "nature" and "culture" in ways that mitigated environmental damage to the land. Navajo culture was in rhythm with the character of the Colorado Plateau.; The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo began a process of profound cultural and ecological change in the forest that continues today. After the U.S. greatly reduced the size of the Navajo landbase by creating the Navajo Reservation, Dine use of the forest became more intensive and extensive. Traditional patterns of seasonal transhumance slowed, changing Dine culture in ways that went against the land's health and character. The government magnified this process by using the Defiance Plateau's lumber to build schools, churches, and trading posts, furthering the policy of assimilation. After the economic devastation of Stock Reduction, the Bureau of Indian Affairs created Navajo Forest Products Industries, a tribal economic enterprise. Following the industrial logic of sustained yield, NFPI exploited the Chuska Mountains for three decades (1962--1992), creating jobs and tribal revenues.; As the old growth disappeared, an intratribal conflict over commercial timber harvesting erupted on the reservation. Led by Leroy Jackson, Dine CARE, a grassroots Navajo organization, fused traditional agropastoral and spiritual values with the ecological principles and legal strategies of the environmental movement, accelerating NFPI's demise. As the century ended, the Navajo Nation's own Forestry Department began the arduous task of trying to re-establish a sense of health and harmony in the forest.
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